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At the age of 50, I semi-retired from traditional employment and transitioned to being a full-time artist. I have the pleasure of spending every day in Birdsong Studio doing what I love. This blog was started almost a decade ago as a public accountability mechanism for a weight loss intention. It has grown into a number of different directions over the years. I hope you enjoy it.

Drunk with Sound...again

At some point last fall I had a terrible cold and during a particularly powerful sneeze, the tube that had been planted in my ear in March 2010 went flying out. Over the next couple of weeks, my middle ear flooded with fluid pushing up against my eardrum rendering it immovable. As the fluid built up, my hearing became worse and worse. So, for the past 10 months or so, if you were whispering on my left side, I probably didn't hear a thing.

Instantly, the hearing that had been gone for so long, returned. Once again, I was drunk with sound, though the effect was not as pronounced as the first go around.

As audio data is now coming in my left side, my brain has had to re-calibrate itself. For months, it had automatically compensated for the loss on the one side to give some semblance of audio orientation. All of a sudden I didn't know where the sounds were coming from, there was just too much data coming in much too quickly.

The volume had to be turned down on the devices in my world: the office phone, the BlackBerry, the television. It almost stopped my heart, when the cordless phone sitting to my left in my home study rang last night. I became temporarily paralyzed, not knowing how to react. It's so hard to describe.

Does this ever happen to you? You take an amazing digital picture, the composition is perfect, the expression on your subject's face - priceless, but the colours are dull and everything is a little dark. So, you bring the photo into your friendly neighborhood photo editor, add a little brightness, bump up the contrast and VOILA! You have a completely new and wonderful picture. That's what getting my hearing back feels like, my hearing has been audioshopped.

A Fort McMurray based artist specializing in wild colour portraits, Russell is also Director of Communications and Community Impact with The United Way of Fort McMurray. He is also a facilitator, freelance writer, blogger, actor, community builder, husband and father.